


so wrap me up in dreams and death

by raven_aorla



Series: Death's Champions [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020), The Sandman (Comics)
Genre: Crossover, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Extremely Mild Sandman Spoilers, F/F, Gen, M/M, Permanent Character Death, Sandman Unfamiliarity OK, Suicidal Thoughts, Temporary Character Death, The Woman Who Patched Up Andy Was Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2020-08-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:02:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26200837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raven_aorla/pseuds/raven_aorla
Summary: Death doesn't fully understand why she's supposed to bring certain warriors back to life again and again until the day she...doesn't, but she takes the responsibility seriously. Including enlisting her brother Dream in making sure they don't have to do it alone, improvising when things don't go according to script, and popping up for an incognito pep talk.
Relationships: Andromache of Scythia & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova & Nile Freeman, Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Death of the Endless & Delirium of the Endless, Death of the Endless & Dream of the Endless, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Death's Champions [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1909243
Comments: 23
Kudos: 160





	so wrap me up in dreams and death

**Author's Note:**

> That nice woman who helps Andy out at the pharmacy looks a bit like Death of the Endless. Upon that realization, I was fated to write what you see below. 
> 
> Title is taken from the Neil Gaiman poem "The Fairy Reel".

This story began not particularly long ago, by the reckoning of their kind, but long enough ago that the name _Morpheus_ had not yet sprung from mortal lips.

“Little brother, I stand in my gallery and I hold your sigil. Can we talk? Actually, can I visit?”

Dream dismissed his servants/creations (for him, one and the same) and got up from his throne to make for his own gallery. _“You may, my sister.”_

She climbed out of the frame that held her sigil of eternal life, one that certain humans would eventually adopt from her and name the ankh. She wore that same symbol around her neck, pure silver, glinting in contrast to her black clothing, milk-pale skin, and kohl-dark eyes. Her smile crinkled those eyes’ edges. “It’s been a few decades at least. I lost track. You look okay. Are you okay?”

He didn’t smile, but the seriousness of his face softened. _“Well enough. It’s good to see you. Can I offer you any refreshment?_

“Just a quiet place to talk, thank you.”

Once they were comfortably seated in a private chamber of his castle, Dream asked what this was about. Despite her affection for all beings, especially himself and their youngest sibling, Death wasn’t inclined to purely social visits.

“I need to ask you a favor.”

He adjusted his black cloak. _“If it is in my power."_

“You know how you periodically have to deal with a mortal born with the ability to shape your realm in a super harmful way and you don’t know why but you have to kill that person to stop it? I have the opposite thing.”

_“I do not understand."_

“Sometimes I show up to take someone, right? And when I get there, I know I mustn’t. I know I have to breathe life into them again. Again, again, again, for centuries or millennia if that’s what feels like the right thing. I talked to Destiny about it once. He was cryptic, as usual.”

 _“Imagine that,”_ Dream said, deadpan.

“But I eventually gathered that these people regulate certain deaths needing to happen at certain times, both by saving lives and ending them. They’re all warriors, you see. It’s like they’re called to my service, even if it’s not my idea, and it’s my job to keep them from the sunless lands until it’s truly their time. It’s not easy on them. It’s not exactly easy on me. It’s hard not to start caring more than usual...” She trailed off and played with her ankh, lost in thought.

_“The favor?"_

Death explained, “As I said, it’s not easy on them. I think it would help them if they knew they weren’t alone. Some of them overlap. People need people. I’d like them to dream of each other. True dreams, so they can find each other if they want. I think that’ll help.”

 _“Tell me their names and it is done.”_ The ruby hanging from his neck glinted the way the stars deep in his black pools of eyes often did, as if sealing the promise.

“Right now, two women. Andromache of Scythia and Quynh. I’ll tell you when there’s more.” She smoothed back some errant strands of his inky black hair. “I’ve got work to do. Thanks, I owe you one.”

****

“I know you,” Lykon said to the woman who’d appeared out of nowhere, even as his two battle-sisters held him, weeping. The woman's skin was dark as the people he’d been born to, and though he couldn’t remember his mother’s face he felt like he saw hints of it in hers. But his mother would never have worn an Egyptian symbol around her neck, or an eye of Horus curling under one of her kohl-rimmed eyes.

“We’ve met on more occasions than I usually meet people, but the living aren’t generally meant to know me, so you’ve forgotten each time.” she said. “Nothing lives forever. It’s time to go now, Lykon. You’ve been very brave. You’ve served me well.”

Sliding out of his drained, broken body was like casting off stained clothes for fresh linen. Or a snake shedding its dead skin in order to shine again. Lykon’s sadness when he realized the woman’s true identity wasn’t for himself. “Will they manage without me?”

“They won’t be alone. Would you like to find out what happens next?” She smiled like the warming dawn after a frosty night. After one last look back, Lykon took her hand. He heard the sound of wings.

****

“I messed up.” She said it immediately after appearing in the Dreaming. No preamble.

Dream - now using Morpheus the most frequently out of all his names - raised an eyebrow. _“You are the most constant of us. You do what is needful.”_

“I need you to send dreams to two new immortal warriors. Not one.”

_“I thought only one was called at a time?”_

Death laughed ruefully. “I felt what I feel when I meet one of them, right? This time, though, two warriors killed each other at the same time, and I couldn’t tell which one of them had been called. I might have panicked.”

When she told him their names, Morpheus sensed that they were in fact visiting his realm at the moment, so he escorted his sister to take a look. Yusuf and Nicolo were lying together in tall grass, gazing up at stars that did not exist in their galaxy and speaking to one another in a language not to be found in the waking world. One was still bleeding from a slit throat and the other from a sword wound to his chest, but neither seemed to mind.

 _“Their minds and hearts are now...entangled. Interlocked, for good or ill.”_ Morpheus concluded. _“Regardless of your anxieties, I doubt you, out of all of us, are capable of truly making an error. I will send them the visions as usual.”_

****

Desire liked to mess around with their siblings' things. It was in their nature, and it had hardly taken a push this time. They didn’t think Death would be mad at them for this one, though. If she saw a pair of filthy, bloody men who'd been at each other’s throats for weeks now starting to desperately rut with each other instead, she’d probably think it was _sweet._

__(About two hundred years later, Desire was starting to find it sickening, but couldn’t seem to undo this everlasting fidelity crap that had come out of what was supposed to be a minor prank. You win this round, big sis.)_ _

__****_ _

__“UnDeR the SEa,” the youngest of the Endless murmured, currently about forty percent whirling baby cuttlefish with flashing color spots. A tear was sliding from her blue eye at the thought of one of her favorite sister’s favorite people being sad because of drowning and drowning. Her green eye was being a cuttlefish. Humans were so mean sometimes, taking a human who couldn’t die and putting her in a box and dropping it into the sea. Delirium had tried drowning and drowning and drowning once, but it hadn’t made anything better. Though Destruction’s hug after he’d pulled her from the water and given her a scolding had made it a little better. “I PlaY with yoUR speCiaL frIend in the Box wHiLe YOU’re not Talking to hER unDeR the SeA.”_ _

__“I know you do, Del, and that’s your right,” Death said, gently running fingers through her hair. She wasn’t smiling, but she wasn’t frowning either. “I’m not upset at you.”_ _

__“Mm, GOod.” They were...on a mountain. A friendly mountain. On Earth. Delirium was having a good enough day that she could remember what planet they were on, plus there were little cakes right next to her hand. “dO you HAVE to go RigHt aWAY?”_ _

__“We can finish this tea party first. What flavor is this tea?”_ _

__“StAR anIsE aNd ExIsTENtial CrISIS,” Delirium said proudly._ _

__****_ _

__“No, no, no, take me with you this time,” Booker gasped, falling to his incorporeal knees and prepared to lick her fucking boots if necessary. “I’m so tired. I’m so tired and lonely and my friends are nothing but tiny sparks in the night that warm me less and less -”_ _

__“I can’t yet, Sebastien,” Death said. She crouched down and tipped up his face. “Shh, it’s going to be okay. The time will come.”_ _

__He came back to life with the odd sensation of someone having kissed his forehead. It then slipped his mind, in favor of the more familiar sensation of Andy dragging him to his feet and hauling him to safety with a string of fond profanity._ _

__****_ _

__Lykon had learned of his returned mortality at the moment of death. For Andy, it was different, and Death felt a responsibility to check in before the grand finale. The shop was actually meant to be closed at this hour, hence the lack of any actual employees. Andy didn’t need to know that. To avoid spooking her, Death toned down the strikingness of her appearance while still remaining close to one of her signature looks._ _

__Death had spent enough time in hospitals to know how to patch up a shoulder wound. More importantly, Death knew Andromache of Scythia well enough to know what to say, what would keep her going for a bit longer._ _

__****_ _

__“You were the girl who helped me with my shoulder wound, the first one that didn’t heal right away,” Andy said, eyes narrowing. Staring at the woman, whose real identity was now dawning on her all over again, was preferable to staring at her own frail old body and members of her strange, wonderful family clutching at each other over its emptiness._ _

__Death replied, “I’m impressed that you remember after all these decades. I wanted to check in, you know?”_ _

__“It was memorable. Who’s this?”_ _

__Standing at a polite distance was what almost looked more like a ghost than Andy herself did when she looked down at her translucent shape. His skin was paper pale and his eyes were like windows into deep space, twinkling with distant points of light. Where Death was in black jeans, black boots, and a black tank top, he was in white jeans, white boots, and a white sports jacket over a white collared shirt. The only touch of color was a large emerald pin where a boutonniere would usually go._ _

__“This is my lil’ bro,” Death said, with a small smile that reminded Andy of the ones Quynh had only ever had for her in quiet moments between kisses. “You’re eligible for a special offer.”_ _

_“I am Dream. You died in your sleep, and moreover you have been worshipped or believed in some way or another for a very long time,”_ he said. 

__“Get to the point.” Andy wasn’t buying the capital G God concept that Nile still clung to, even if in a different way than she once did. She didn’t know what waited for her if she went with Death, but she’d waited plenty long enough to find out. Then occurred to her that these were literally a pair of cosmic forces that would affect what was going to happen to her now, so she added, “Please.”_ _

_“I know something about strange paths from mortality to immortality, and about transfiguration and unexpected power,”_ Dream continued, fiddling with the emerald pin.“ _You lived under the domain of Death as a woman walking the earth. But if you were to become a god - perhaps of just wars, or of protecting the innocent - you would become mine, instead. Would you like to hear more details?”_

__****_ _

__Nile dreamed about Andy a lot after she died for good. Sometimes they were nightmares, but more often they were memories. Once, only once, she dreamed of her riding a golden horse through fields of tall grass, her labrys strapped to her back and pure joy on her face._ _

__When Nile woke up, the looks on the other’s faces told her that they’d dreamed it too._ _


End file.
